Hi, I'm Stephanie, Army wife, mother of two little girls, and fur kids (2 dogs and a cat). I enjoy cooking, cleaning (I know I'm a weirdo), reading, writing, crafting, and anything else that comes along. I love taking pictures, but I am not a pro by any means. I love singing...again, not a pro. I have a great family, some awesome friends, and I LOVE meeting new friends. Welcome!

Hmmm...well if money were NO object, I would take one of those around the world travel opportunities, a lot of time they can last for months and are thousands upon thousands of dollars, but wouldn't it be worth it? There are still so many things I want to see!!

Did you have pets growing up?

Absolutely, I had pets coming out of my ears! When I lived with my Dad, his girlfriend had 6 birds, a fox, and a dog. My Mom has had horses, cows, dogs, and cats all the time when we were growing up. I am an animal lover, I have two dogs and a cat right now, but I would love to have a lil goat, a mini pig (not sure what they are called, but they are small for like forever), and more dogs and cats. I guess I'm a little bit of a country girl at heart...

What do you do for exercise?

Ha! Okay, on a good year, you'll find me doing everything from strength training, running, doing 5k's, bicycling, etc. When my husband is home (and I will probably never understand why), I get laaaaaazy. So ummm...yeah I have been walking a bit though, lol. I need to walk a LOT more...and then start running again! I love the endorphins!What is the best piece of advice you've ever received as a MilSpouse?

Ya know, I don't get advice as a mil spouse per say. I get advice from friends, and family but it doesn't apply to mil spouses in general. I guess one of the best things I've learned is you can't please everyone, and when you try, YOU are the one who pays. I've learned this the hard way!

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Hi everyone! Welcome to my little world! My name is Stephanie. Here is a not so recent pic of me! I'm much ummm...fluffier now...yeah, fluffier....

I am the wife of a Signal soldier in the Army. He's my whole world, and I would never trade him, or this life for anything!

Gosh, he's sooo handsome!!! We are the parents of two beautiful, intelligent, wonderful girls! (But I may be a little biased!)

We are also the parents of some awesome animals, Brody, Bella, and Lexi

I am just an Army wife, with my own lil blog. I enjoy doing little crafts, cooking, I like to have a very clean house (when possible), I enjoy running, walks on the beach, romantic evenings.....oh...
Okay, seriously, I'm just living life, enjoying my family and friends, and I really enjoy having my own blog. I talk about personal things, but I also talk about not so personal stuff. Check out my blog! But most of all, enjoy your day!!.

NOW FOR SOME GIVEAWAYS!!

BE SURE THAT YOU READ THE HOW TO ENTERS FOR ALL PRODUCTS TO BE ENTERED INTO EACH GIVEAWAY!!there are five giveaways!

Oh, but what is a bloghop without some blog CANDY!!! I am having my very first giveaway!!
I am giving away a few things, because I love cooking...and I feel that everyone should enjoy it a little bit too... (all purchased by me, and will be mailed by me as well!) 3 items up for grabs!

1:
A kids set of recipe cards, a star, heart, and flower shaped cookie/bread cutters, and some colorful measuring cups, all from The Pampered Chef (all of these are still in the bags so its kind of hard to tell how awesome they are!)

2 up for grabs is a Bakers Roller, which comes in HANDY when you are doing any baking, and a citrus peeler (also comes in handy for some oranges, and kids can use it!)

3 is my favorite, the ALL THE BEST cookbook, also from Pampered Chef.

*These items were not given to me by The Pampered Chef, I did purchase these of my own accord. I am not endorsed by, or an employee (anymore) of The Pampered Chef. I used to be an employee, but I got rid of most of my stock before I left Germany. These are all brand spankin' new!!*

4. ALSO I HAVE ANOTHER FANTASTIC GIVEAWAY

YOUR CHOICE OF either....

One of my great friends Cynthia is giving away a warmer from PARTYLITE!! If you haven't tried partylite you absolutely SHOULD. Its fantastic!!

5. AND ANOTHER...Another fantastic friend of mine just started her business, and she has some awesome hair bows to giveaway as well. You can get ALL of these fantastic beautiful hair clips!!

How to Enter

MANDATORY-

You must leave a comment telling me which item is your favorite (1 comment, 1 entry)

OPTIONAL: Become a follower (1 comment, 1 more entry)

MANDATORY FOR WARMER-

Visit Cynthia's facebook site and join her site here (1 comment, 1 entry)

My last entry for PW's photo contest!
This was taken when a friend of mine and I went down to the Lake near Baumholder one day. Sierra (then 5) brought me all of the little flowers she found, I love having sweet kids!

I am still in the "learning" stages of my cricut expression, so I haven't posted much if anything about it. BUT I have cut a few random things, lol. There are a lot of blogs out there, and a lot do giveaways! Here is one that another blog referred me to, if you have a cricut, check it out!

I have been having to get creative with our dinners lately. One because we haven't be paid yet, two because I have a lot of food in our cupboards and no actual recipes to make. I have a problem, sometimes I'll buy the ingredients for a recipe, and forget to make said recipe. We end up eating the fresh veggies or fruits that go in the said recipe, but then I have the other ingredients that can either be frozen (i.e. breakfast sausage), or that are pantry stable (i.e. long grain rice). So last night I kind of threw this stuff together, I didn't know if it would turn out or not...I thought about doing a breakfast casserole, but wanted something different. I had sausage, some leftover rice (only about a cup left too), lots of chicken broth that I got on sale not too long ago, and I always have multitudes of spices....I'll show ya a pic sometime! Here is what I came up with.

I am just going to call this dirty rice, its not your typical dirty rice though, but its dirty enough for me, lol.

BTW-my girls thoroughly enjoyed this, I cook a lot of different things, but there are a few things that my girls just absolutely LOVE. Apparently, this is now one of their favorites!!

1 lb ground breakfast sausage

1 cup white long grain rice

1 14.5 oz can chicken broth

about 1 tbl minced dried onion

about 1 tbl minced garlic

some pepper

dash of Tony's seasoning

I cooked up the sausage, until it was all nicely cooked and yummy looking. I added the rice, and all spices, mixed it up, then added the chicken broth. I covered and let cook for about 20 min (as per the instructions on the bag of rice), then stirred, and voila! Easy Peasy! =)

Tuesday night, I had to have a pantry night. I had some smoked turkey sausage in the fridge, and a bunch of random things in my pantry...here is what I came up with:

Smoked sausage spaghetti stuff!

I boiled up a whole bag of spaghetti (saving some for whatevers for later), cooked the sliced smoked sausage on my skillet, added minced onion, minced garlic, and some basil for good measure (as well as some salt and pepper), mixed in about two cups worth of cooked spaghetti, added some stewed (and then chopped) canned tomatoes, and voila.

The verdict on this one was my kids liked it, but weren't thrilled with it. My husband loved it, and I thought it was only OKAY. Next time I would definitely add more tomatoes, and maybe some fresh basil. I served this with a salad, and some steamed peas. Oh and I made some homemade brownies for dessert. =)

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Then Paul got orders for Germany, our house went up for sale, my workouts came to a stop, my eating well came to a stop (it takes a while to prepare, and having to be on call for someone to see your house 24/7 is not ideal). A few months later, and lots of stress, eating out, and no workouts later, we made a successful move to Baumholder, Germany. After a few months, I had gained enough weight to annoy me:

Shortly after, Paul had orders for Iraq. I again started working out, and eating better before he left. Then slowly during the deployment, and trying South Beach diet for about a month, no diet, just doing bootcamp M-W-F, and doing workouts at the gym or at home for months, and then finally doing the nutrisystem diet, I slowly started looking better again. When he left, I was 211. Not as bad as before, but still not good either.

You could tell in my face, that I was losing weight, slowly but surely!

I only got to about 165 before Paul came home this time, and it was a much slower process than the first time. It took me the whole year and then some (that time he was deployed for 15 mos), but I felt great afterwards.Then he came home-we began drinking, eating to our hearts content, and being comfortable completely. Soooo...I gained....again....sigh. =(Part 3 coming soon....

Miller High Life wants to sponsor YOU for doing so they’ll you $1 check or you can donate your $1 to the IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), which is what I chose to do! Instead of paying high priced celebrities or sports stars Miller wants YOU to sponsor people who really deserve it, and that would be ordinary every day people!

So head on over here (you must be 21 years or older) and sign your contract! Offer is valid until 4/30/11 or until $200,000 worth of personal checks, dontations and coupons combined have been received. Allow 4 – 6 weeks for your check or coupon to arrive.

I am so passionate about helping our veterans and Military Members any way that I can and $1 from a lot of people can go a LONG way!!!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

One of my resolutions, just about every year, is to eat better, and workout more. I really enjoy cooking, but not when its just me eating. So frozen foods I go. I have a love for Lean Cuisines like you wouldn't believe. I prefer them above all others, so far at least. And I just had to tell the world about these new ones that I just tried, the Fajita-style chicken spring rolls. Apparently with chipotle chicken (I don't like chipotle, but these were so yummy), corn, black beans, bell peppers, and onion. Really you can't taste much of the peppers or onion, they aren't overbearing or anything.

Now I will admit that they don't look like they did in the picture once cooked, and prepared, and the serving size is really small, just three lil spring rolls. About the length of my middle biggest finger.

I was a little hesitant to try them at first, because I'm hesitant to try anything new. That's just me though.

So I just had to tell everyone how yummy these things were, they taste incredibly bad for you, but they are soooo good, as long as you can stick with the one itty bitty serving...I would definitely suggest supplementing a salad with it. I didn't know how spicy it was until I tried it, so I only made the one serving for lunch, spicy things fill me up really fast, so I waited. These were only mildly spicy, I'm not a huge spicy fan. I went to a wings restaurant the other night, and stuck with the mild because the hot is just too much for me! So now that I'm done, and still hungry, I'll go make my second serving...errrr...I mean SALAD...yeah.

Lean Cuisines are great, I love them, and this one is amazing. Thanks Lean Cuisine for making some yummy foods for those of us trying to eat a little better!

If you want, here is a coupon for Lean Cuisines so you can try them: click here

Lean Cuisine did NOT pay me to say any of these things, nor did I receive compensation of any form. I just enjoyed the product and chose to blog about it.

I love Pioneer Woman. Who couldn't? I mean, first off, she cooks delicious food...and takes such appetizing pictures of it. She writes about her life, and she's like the girl I'd love to be. Seriously. I would love to be able to have the patience to homeschool my children. I would love to be able to take such wonderful pictures, and have such a fantastic outlook on life. I am working on the fantastic outlook part, but hey nobody is perfect. She does these photography challenges every so often. I love them, there are so many professional photos that get entered, and featured. I love putting mine on there, even though I know they won't get featured, I can always have hope, lol. I am NOT a pro, so that hurts me, a lot. I also don't have photoshop or whatever its called. I have straight out of the camera shots for the most part. Sometimes I crop, or sometimes I lighten the pictures to see them better, but I don't know how to texturize, or process or whatever the "cool" thing is to do on pictures these days. I just know how to point and shoot, it helps that I have a fantastic camera (who cares if its older, its awesome, lol). Anyway, so if she won't feature my pics, I will on here anyway. This week's theme was flowers.
I was lucky enough to have the chance to go to the Tulip Gardens when I was in Holland. These photos are from there. I loved it, but one thing I noticed after I got home...my pictures looked almost fake, but you should have seen the flowers, they looked almost fake too, almost too perfect, and just gorgeous all the way around. Here are some of my favorites! Tell me whatcha think?

These are the two that I already entered into the little contest. Here is the one I'll be entering tomorrow:

Monday, January 24, 2011

I AM ADDICTED.
I have issues. I guess it could be worse, I could be addicted to really bad things, the things aren't THAT bad.
They may take up a lot of my time, but sometimes things take time.
I am addicted to the following, and I am admitting to it:
COUPONS
GIVEAWAYS
MY KIDS
BLOGS
FACEBOOK
ETC...
I know there are more, but these are the first that come to mind.
I have been reading the book Pick another checkout lane, honey. I am now dreaming about coupon clipping...
I enter so many giveaways, its hard to keep track of them all. I have won a few, but feel just a little bitter when someone else wins. Then again...I am also happy for said person that wins...just wish it was me, isn't that natural?
My kids...yeah, this is self explanatory. I miss them when they are at school, yet want them to be in school when they are pulling each others hairs out!
Blogs...yeah I follow so many it literally takes me HOURS to go through my blog dashboard, etc.
Facebook, yup, this is a long addiction though. I've had it for a while. I love catching up with my friends, finding deals people post, and just having something to do.

I know I recently blogged about trying to take a step back...but then, but then, there was another big blog giveaway, and another, and another. So like I do, a lot it seems, I have changed my mind.

Instead, I'm going to EMBRACE my addictions. They aren't hurting anyone, except maybe the house cause it doesn't get as clean, I don't want to cook as much, and sometimes I don't want to leave the house because there is something cool going on. HAH. No worries though, I still get the things done that need to be done...I just might get them done eventually instead of immediately.

So there ya have it. I have been tossing it around in my head too, and I might even do a giveaway on my blog, possibly for my birthday that is just around the corner...or maybe for the Blizzard Bloghop. It would be something that I have purchased myself, and I would send it to the winner...hmmm?? It could get more traffic to my site, but I also don't want a bunch of people to join my site because I'm having a giveaway.
I can get somewhat personal on this site...

Well any suggestions? HELLOOO??? Is this thing on???? =)
Have a great day!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

This would be my laundry room...and you see, I want to decorate every room in my house one at a time...why not start with the laundry room? I love my washer and dryer..but I have to say those little drawers under the front loads...they don't do much, except you get an extra drawer. I wouldn't have spent the extra $400 bucks on them, had I known at the time that they wouldn't much help with my back when putting stuff in the front loads...I also don't think next time, I would go with front loads, I am a traditional type of girl, but at the time, I wanted the best looking ones. They are certainly pretty. And efficient too. I think that if we ever move, I will leave them with the house though. The kitty litter box, has to stay in there, we don't really have any other place that it could go, and this is as good as any. I like my lil clear trashcan for the lint and what not. Oh and do you see those little rugs...first I got them for $2, I washed them, because I wash all of my rugs (with the exception of the big ones), and the white turned pink. SIGH.

I have my WASH picture that has been featured on my blog on the left side of the wall. I bought the cute little Laundry sign at Hobby Lobby. And I can't keep the cat food in the garage because the mice will get it if I do. I love the creamy coloring on the walls, the red is because we have a theme of a little bit of red in my house all over. We have a beautiful deep red wall in my living room. So what else can I do in here? It needs something! I don't know what? Help!